Sensei Ray Porter and Te-Jutsu New Zealand

Unfortunately for this gentleman this started as a typical translation/grammar argument. There are hundreds, if not close to a thousand, of these threads all over bullshido. They end up in trollshido or YMAS and die a slow death. This thread was headed in this direction until numerous appeals to authority.

His overzealous student jadekayak, John Williams, offered up the dojo for a challenge and promised to take pictures of colons. He argued that Te-Jutsu was older than old, from Okinawa, and not a made up art despite numerous instances of proof to the contrary.

Multiple people create new arts from Bruce Lee to some of our very own instructors and fellow posters. Some are legit some are not, but this is not the issue. if you have legit training and can source most of your credentials who cares. That is not the issue nor the focus of this thread.

What came to light was various websites proving it is new and his tie to some very questionable organizations for some of his ranks.

There are two glaring things wrong with Sensei Porter's Bio concerning Te-Jutsu.
The first was the awarding of a PhD in Philosophy for Martial Arts.
The three main awards presented were:

Sokeship 10th Dan, for the Founding of Shiroi Tsuru Te-jutsuPhD in Martial Arts and Sciences
6th Dan in Karate

The benefits of WOMA membership
Many other associations will try to copy us but can't come near us. We screen our inductees and only will accept the "Best of the Best" in their arts and disciplines. We offer you this:

We dont have yearly membership fees or charge charter fees for schools.
We Dont charge for promotions. WE have technical advisers of various disciplines to promote. We only issue ranks that you have "earned" not bought!

You must send us a copy of your rank you attained from a sensei or master not from a hall of fame or association.
Send the name of your school for dojo lifetime charter
Send (4) small passport photo's for ID purposes
IF you are a founder of your system you will receive SOKEship at no extra charge
If you have an e-mail send it plus your postal mailing address and phone number.
If you have over 25 years of martial arts you are eligible for your doctorate degree at no charge. (This is not an academic degree,..it is given for your service to martial arts.
You must enclose a postal money order or western union draft of $150USD for lifetime induction. Personal checks will not be accepted. Please make out the postal money order "WOMA/Jack Stern"
Personal checks will not be accepted!
Please send your birth date(not the year, only the month & day). We send Birthday greetings yearly.

Now, what I find very interesting is the fact the WOMA is not on the above PhD certificate image. The award is from the "International University of Martial Arts Sciences."

Notice, if you will, that nowhere on the Mr. Porter's website is it shown that the PhD isn't an academic award.

Now, it gets even more interesting. In the article above they claim the awards were unsolicited. This is a semantic play on words. Which is interesting because many of these organizations are self/student nominated awards. I nominate someone and after a fee they are a Hall of Fame, PhD, or other award holder of a particular Hall of Fame..

We will keep our standards up as to only accept legally trained martial artists not those who acquired rank by buying it from "Halls of Fame" or the associations that sell via mail ranks without ever testing. WE will have martial artists that wish to acquire a higher rank, get promoted by one of their discipline. WE still don't approve of the associations that make money by charging you yearly fees for charters or you must attend their yearly Hall of Fame. RANKS ARE EARNED!!! NOT BOUGHT OR SOLD!

Now, this flies in the face of their own awarding procedures. How do you award a 10th Dan "for Founding of Shiroi Tsuru Te-jutsu?" There is no one on the council who has practiced this art to critique or speak on it being done correctly.
How do you speak about "without ever testing" when a "council discussed his credentials?" He was in New Zealand and the org is in the USA.

On the website is this disclaimer:

Many other associations will try to copy us but can't come near us. We screen our inductees and only will accept the "Best of the Best" in their arts and disciplines. We offer you this:

We dont have yearly membership fees or charge charter fees for schools.
We Dont charge for promotions. WE have technical advisers of various disciplines to promote. We only issue ranks that you have "earned" not bought!

You must send us a copy of your rank you attained from a sensei or master not from a hall of fame or association.
Send the name of your school for dojo lifetime charter
Send (4) small passport photo's for ID purposesIF you are a founder of your system you will receive SOKEship at no extra charge
If you have an e-mail send it plus your postal mailing address and phone number. If you have over 25 years of martial arts you are eligible for your doctorate degree at no charge. (This is not an academic degree,..it is given for your service to martial arts.You must enclose a postal money order or western union draft of $150USD for lifetime induction. Personal checks will not be accepted. Please make out the postal money order "WOMA/Jack Stern"
Personal checks will not be accepted!
Please send your birth date(not the year, only the month & day). We send Birthday greetings yearly.

Semantics we are non profit, but $150 for "lifetime membership."

So, Ray Porter accepted three "awards" and use them in a manner that doesn't denot their quality.

The PhD is non-academic.
The 10th Dan is awarded by a "council" who has no experience in his art.
The 6th Dan I have no clue about, but was awarded by the same council.

I need no research at all - one look at that web page is all I need to recommend you stay away from these guys.

Originally Posted by Res Judicata

Lots of red flags.

None of this says anything good. Play to play organizations and no real art names. The art names don't meaning anything -- they're just generic. "Karate" could mean anything. And the few pictures I see don't look good at all.

This small spattering of discussion is relevant because the term used was made up to name the art. Again no one has said it is wrong. The problem is there were many translation problems and the soke council awards that raised red flags.

Originally Posted by NeilG

Soke council == bullshido at its worst. Steer far clear of this bozo.

If you are interested in JSA, here is the NZ Kendo Federation website and in particular here is the contact page for iaido under that federation.

Originally Posted by Lane

Iaijutsu is the only one of those terms translated properly; everything else is... badly done. Stay far away.

Second, we know that BJJ stands for "basically just judo." It's cool. We're all cool with that.

Third, the kenjutsu "terms" that are on the website are not real kenjutsu terms. If he's koryu, he'll have a menkyo kaiden, in which case, he'll have no problem showing it because menkyo have earned the right to show it.

I don't know about any of the other stuff, but China and Japan are just as full of hucksters as anywhere else, people willing to trade off the East Asian mystique and "verify" someone as part of the martial arts world for a fee. That's why we're asking for certificates from recognized organizations like the Zen Nippon Kendo Renmei, or the Nihon Kobudo Renmei, or one of the big koryu arts organizations in Japan. I'm less familiar with Chinese martial arts so I don't know what the big certification groups are for CMA, but we've plenty of CMAers around here that know and can verify it.

Still, nonsense Japanese words like "te-jutsu" give me pause. Taken literally it means "fist technique," but that's not the word that koryu martial arts use for striking techniques, which is usually atemi or atemi waza. It's most likely a portmanteau of the third syllable of karate-do and the suffix -jutsu, which is the general Japanese word for "technique," as in "iaijutsu" (drawing technique) or "kenjutsu" (sword technique).

Originally Posted by Petter

GKR is an excellent example of an organisation held in universal contempt on these boards. Search around and see.

Odds are, he just misspelled. He probably meant “pay to play”, as in, most of these intergalactic supersoke organisations are empty, meaningless circlejerks where no quality control ever occurs and membership may be as difficult as opening your own school and claiming you’re the head of a style, no questions asked, just pay the fee.

(They do sometimes have legitimate martial artists as members. Sometimes, they do this by giving these people memberships without being asked, or even letting them know.)

Martial arts that are also sports are the best martial arts.

Originally Posted by Prince Vlad

Actually, te jutsu means "hand technique" - just making the distinction between 'ken' which means fist (different kanji to the ken used for sword). It does indeed look like a made up word.

That's my issue as well. I'm hoping someone with better software can see what is written in that small paragraph. The interesting thing is that there are people with the same university calling themselves professors.

How can any Ph.D not be "academic"? Notice words like "board of Regents" and "Diploma" and "Dean" on this document.

Notice also that the word "Honorary" does not appear.

What does the small print at the bottom say about their accreditation?

It's a question of who has accredited the institution that awards the degree. I'm sure you've seen or heard of the 'diploma mills' online where anyone can go purchase higher education degrees and the website swears that whatever institution awards the degree is 'accredited'. Well, they are...they are simply not accredited by any organization that has any official capacity to do so; for example, there's a group called something like, The National Online Education Council that 'accredits' these diploma mills. It's a made up group that has self-granted powers of accreditation.

From my perspective, that's exactly what's going on here. His Ph.D. seems to me to have come from a diploma mill; hence, the degree isn't truly 'academic' in the sense that Porter didn't complete any academic regimen in order to get it.

"International University of Martial Arts Sciences" brings up a bunch of hits on Google.

I got the same when I opened the cert in PS, blew it up and sharpened it. The fact the granting organization is based from a P.O Box in a country not his own is a huge red flag. This is a typical tactic for diploma mills. For example, many people in the U.S. use these online diploma mills and get a degree from what appears to be an American university, but lo and behold...when their degree arrives in the mail, it's been mailed from a country outside of the U.S. These groups are simply printing the degrees on behalf of these diploma mill U.S. based "schools" and cutting the alleged school in on the profit.

How can any Ph.D not be "academic"? Notice words like "board of Regents" and "Diploma" and "Dean" on this document.

Notice also that the word "Honorary" does not appear.

What does the small print at the bottom say about their accreditation?

Forgive potential noob mistakes here, since this is my first post in MABS, but shouldn't someone claiming they have a PhD be able to produce a thesis or dissertation? The requirements for a PhD do vary from country to country, but a thesis or dissertation is pretty key.

EDIT: for most people who got a PhD in 2008, I would expect the thesis or dissertation, or at least a citation for the thesis or dissertation, would be available online.

Last edited by MilkyBarKid; 11/01/2011 10:33pm at .
Reason: Checked date of qualification

Forgive potential noob mistakes here, since this is my first post in MABS, but shouldn't someone claiming they have a PhD be able to produce a thesis or dissertation? The requirements for a PhD do vary from country to country, but a thesis or dissertation is pretty key.

EDIT: for most people who got a PhD in 2008, I would expect the thesis or dissertation, or at least a citation for the thesis or dissertation, would be available online.

Quite. Other than honorary Ph.D.'s, I've yet to meet a person who acquired a Ph.D. (in the U.S. at least) who did not have to submit a dissertation to a doctoral review board. In addition, I don't know of a legitimate Ph.D. granting institution that doesn't keep a copy of it on file for review. Now, certainly some legitimate universities may, at their leisure and prerogative, grant a Ph.D. (or any degree really) if they feel that an individual's body of work outside of the university would equate to having fulfilled the necessary requirements. This is typically why 'honorary' degrees are granted to noted individuals. I know of no one personally who has been awarded any degree other than for the reasons that he/she has completed the necessary coursework and submitted the required essays/theses/dissertations.